1. C by GE: From B2B Conglomerate to D2C Ecommerce

Founded in 1892, GE is one of the largest multinational B2B conglomerates in the world. Yet, when they launched C by GE and introduced consumers to their latest innovation — a series of Bluetooth-enabled smart lightbulbs — they decided to go D2C instead.

Although most people are familiar with their brand (and logo), this was a new arena.

C by GE is more than just an ecommerce site; it’s a portal of education on LED lighting and the benefits of smart-home technology. By creating a highly customized website, GE showcases the product line — bulbs, lamps, apps, and more — as well as invites people to interact with their smart tech and stay up-to-date on new developments and releases:

C by GE uses interactive elements to showcase, educate, and sell their smart LED lights on Shopify Plus

Going D2C online adds agility and intimacy to B2B enterprises. It lets you create and test new products through stand-alone stores, open untapped revenue channels for down-market distribution, and highlight innovation through content-rich experiences.

2. The Emazing Group: Spotlight Product Pages with SEO

The Emazing Group began as a single product that founder Brian Lim (below) sold out of the trunk of his car, LED-embedded gloves. Today, the group encompasses three brands that span verticals like consumer electronics, lifestyle, and fashion: EmazingLights, iHeartRaves, and INTO THE AM.

In 2016, the latter was already on Shopify Plus, while the former two were not. This caused the company to hemorrhage losses month after month because of SEO-related problems.

“We could have never achieved such results with Magento. We were able to lock down top spots for some of our most valuable keywords, bringing in new customers and more revenue than ever before.”

Once they replatformed, they saw an increase of 31% year-over-year in organic traffic for EmazingLights, while iHeartRaves saw a 130% YoY increase, not to mention a 22.59% conversion equalling a 227% increase in revenue in one single month.

iHeartRaves uses SEO to propel their products to the top of search results for high-value terms like sequin bra (Google Incognito results shown above)

All told, the company’s brands have grown annual revenue from $15 million during 2016 to $20 million in 2017 and are on-track to break $30 million this year.

No matter your business, SEO for product descriptions need to be locked down. Utilizing backlinks and internal linking is all well and good, but you need to ensure those links don’t break.

What’s more, SEO-friendly URLs, enticing meta descriptions and page titles that match up with search queries, and clean coding on the back-end are all vital.

3. Nanoleaf: Global Ecommerce Done Right & Automatically

Despite being sold in hundreds of stores around the world, Nanoleaf relies on its ecommerce platform to service 15-20% of its customers. This means customers can shop in their native language and currency without any surprises upon delivery (i.e. duties, taxes, and surcharges).

“We needed to offer customers a better experience,” says Paul Austin-Menear, Director of Digital Strategy at Nanoleaf. “And get them their orders in a timely manner and that’s what our international storefronts and warehouses allow us to do.”

On Nanoleaf, visitors can self-select their geo-location to get local currency and shipping prices

Alternatively, Nanoleaf also uses a shopper’s IP address to direct them to the appropriate eccomerce site

When considering an international ecommerce strategy, putting your customers first is at the heart of it. In following with Nanoleaf’s example, testing how customers will experience your front-end (online ordering process and receiving their delivery) as well as ensuring your back-end (inventory tracking and fulfillment) can be huge revenue drivers.

4. Ring: Consistent Messaging Across Channels in Every Season

Ring is a great example of using consistent messaging throughout your marketing to fully leverage the seasonality of consumer electronics shoppers.

Leading up to Father’s Day, their homepage promoted a 15% sale on select products. That seasonal event led to a series of videos and a sticky bar at the top of subsequent pages.

Ring offers consistent messaging for campaigns throughout their site

Given their family focus, Ring ran a similar promotion for Mother’s Day. But here’s where smart truly comes into play …

In addition to their onsite consistency, they also marketed the event offsite with tailor-made content for each social channel:

A fun video of captured footage from Rings emphasized the benefits of the product and tied in nicely with their Mother’s Day campaign

And the messaging extends through social media with custom hashtags and contests

Best of all, in both cases, the eligible items are already marked down ensuring customers don’t have to fiddle with discount codes upon checkout.

This gives customers a sense of consistency with a uniform message onsite and off. It also simplifies the process of buying by already discounting the items – the retail equivalent to “priced as shown.”

If you’re in the market for holiday or seasonal discounts, consider pre-loading your ecommerce products with the promotional prices instead of discount codes. You can do this for select prices (like Ring did), or you can make the discount applicable to all items.

5. Mevo by Livestream: Specs, Shots, and Streaming Sizzle

Walking the line between technical specifications (the steak) and selling sizzle isn’t easy online. The more sophisticated yet artistic your audience … the more daunting and precarious that line becomes.

To meet these dual — and often dueling — demands, Mevo by Livestream front loads their website with rich and sophisticated imagery (center), a heartfelt features page (right), and a growing catalog of Shot on Mevo videos (left) that run from celebrity influencers to family reunions:

However, when it comes to the Technical Specifications page, they are all business — detailing anything and everything the most scrupulous shopper might want to know:

To do both — and sell on every page — Mevo relies on Shopify Plus; namely, the universally embeddable Buy button:

6. Rad Power Bikes: Popping Up for Online-to-Offline Sales

When you’re shopping in the ecommerce silo, it’s hard to know if a product is trustworthy or not. Rad Power Bikes knows its customers want to try their bikes before purchasing. That’s why they’ve created an online-to-offline (O2O) strategy.

Try Our Bikes offers potential customers the opportunity to test ride the bikes and see first-hand how rad their product truly is. They have a Seattle store as well as B8ta locations across the country.

More than that, these offline locations also allow customers to purchase bikes on the spot (often clearance products), and get their bikes serviced.

Depending on the type of eletronics product you offer, consider whether it’s important to have them experience your wares IRL.

Will this increase the likelihood of purchasing? Will this foster trust in your brand and loyalty? Will this add to their overall experience with your brand? If you answered yes to any one of these questions, perhaps you need to consider O2O as well.

7. asgoodasnew: Comparison Shopping Made Easy

asgoodasnew is a German electronics site offering the latest tech — smartphones, laptops, and electronics — for around 30% less than retail prices.

Despite only selling refurbished and secondhand products, they have a large returning customer base because of their generous return policy (30 days) and warranty (30 months).

asgoodasnew highlights their top products on their homepage, including what you save

With thousands of products — each with their own specifications, conditions, and price points — asgoodasnew guides shoppers through a comparison experience that is second to none:

A prominent search bar and mega menu aids easy discoverability

Availability and prices are shown for products on all category pages

Quick “compare product” boxes lead to custom comparison pages

Cart-level upsells then offer visitors complimentary products

8. TrackR: Getting Found by Alexa & Customers

Who hasn’t lost their keys or their wallet?

TrackR—the lost and found gadget—allows you to track (hence the name) misplaced items, like the aforementioned. By downloading the smartphone app and syncing your chips, you can find virtually anything you’ve tagged.

Anything, that is, except for your phone since you need the app.

However, since teaming up with Amazon’s Alexa, you can now find your phone, too. Bonus points because it’ll make your phone ring if it was left on silent mode.

TrackR teamed up with Amazon’s Alexa to enable a phone-finding feature

Being part of the IoT revolution means your electronics need to sync up with personal digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomePod.

Another benefit is that teaming up with these mega-brands will also help ensure customers adopt your technology faster.

9. Anova Culinary: Introducing International Sales via Facebook Ads

Social media advertising offers B2C and D2C direct access to their ideal customers in new and existing markets. When you already have an existing social media following, you can utilize Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to target ads to similar people around the world.

“Using Facebook’s international Lookalike Audiences, we quickly expanded into new countries,” explained Marius Giese, VP, Direct Sales, Anova Culinary. “This tool allowed us to reach massive amounts of qualified people at scale in new geographical areas.”

Anova brings formal French dining to smart homeowners everywhere

The results were impressive:

5x return on ad spend

4.3x increase in reach

60% decrease in CPA

10. Smart Nora: From Kickstarter to Enterprise Brand

To date, almost 7,000 technology-based products have been successfully launched on the Kickstarter platform since its inception. With all this competition, any new electronics (and tech) projects should take advantage of all that an ecommerce site has to offer … even when you’re in the funding stage.

Take Smart Nora as a great example of what you should do. The product has only been on the market for a couple of years, yet they started their ecommerce site when they were still in the throes of their crowdfunding stage.

This allowed the team at Smart Nora to do a few things very well.

First, they were able to create a website with more information on this new technology so their backers could understand the science behind snoring andbehind Smart Nora. Shopify Plus also allowed them to compile a database of their backers, all 3,500 of them. This way, sending funding, expected production and delivery updates, and, of course, a big fat virtual thank you.

But one of the biggest reasons crowdfunded projects should set up their ecommerce site simultaneously is so they can keep backend logistics (i.e. fulfillment) in order.

If you’re in the planning stages of a crowdfunding campaign for your new product innovation, consider building your ecommerce store simultaneously. This will help you save many-a-headaches and much time down the road.

Final Thoughts on the Best Consumer Electronics Ecommerce Sites

If you’re selling consumer electronics, you need to take advantage of the full resources of your ecommerce platform.

Whether that means integrating apps like Sales Pop, having a multi-channel strategy and offering your customers a native purchasing experience with social media, or starting before your crowdfunding campaign has successfully ended …

You can have a more robust and user-minded website by simply utilizing the right platform’s native features and ecosystem.

What’s more, smart electronics should be integrated with personal digital assistants as well as iOs, Android, and Windows systems so that your customers can truly have a one-touch experience.